Monthly Archives: September 2018

Think there were only three debates during the Quebec election campaign? Not enough time to debate the issues? You probably weren’t looking hard enough then. Thanks to the efforts of local media, there were a bunch of multi-party debates during this election campaign to complement the three official debates by the party leaders.

If you’re still stuck on who to vote for tomorrow, here are links to other debates that took place during this campaign, some on specific issues, some more general, and many that included all candidates in a particular riding.

Editor’s note: In the interests of maintaining my sanity and reducing the amount of time I put into these things, I’m limiting their scope to news that directly affects Canada (though I may occasionally add international news of particular interest to journalism). If you’re interested in getting international media news, you can check out sources like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, the New York Post, Variety.

News about news

A report by the Public Policy Forum that studied 20 markets in Canada shows a decline in newspaper coverage of local politics. Which, duh. The drop doesn’t seem to be as big as expected, possibly because newsrooms have prioritized local political reporting and cut elsewhere instead. It also doesn’t really explore the entire news ecosystem to determine if there’s been an increase in coverage in other types of media as newspapers have declined.

I compiled election night coverage plans for local broadcast media for the Gazette. CTV, CBC, Radio-Canada and TVA will have all-night election specials on their local TV stations in Quebec as well as their all-news networks. Global and Citytv in Montreal will keep their regular primetime but be active on social media and have special election wraps at 11pm. CJAD and CBC Radio will also have election night specials.

The Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel, put together by the federal government to recommend changes to the Broadcasting Act, Telecommunications Act and other related legislation, has put out its request for public comments. The deadline is Nov. 30. Its questions are broad and open-ended, but will result in recommendations for major legislative changes in 2020.

The commission has put out a call for comments on whether new stations should be allowed in Timmins, Ont., and North Bay, Ont., after applications for both markets by Vista Radio.

A controversy is building in Ontario that could wind up at the CRTC or another tribunal. Faith Goldy, a candidate for mayor of Toronto who has been criticized for being a bit too sympathetic to neo-Nazis and white supremacist arguments, had ads banned from Bell Media’s CP24 this week. But whether Bell has the authority to do this is unclear. The CRTC requires broadcasters be equitable in treating candidates during elections, both in free and paid time. Goldy is a municipal candidate, not a provincial or federal one, but presumably should be afforded the same rights.

Radio-Canada has a new fiction podcast called Cavale that is recorded in “3D” audio. By “3D” they basically mean “stereo”, though it’s a bit richer than that because the microphones capturing the audio moves during scenes. I listened to an episode and you definitely feel the stereo sound (sometimes the difference between the two sides is too much and gets distracting), but it doesn’t feel that “3D”, whatever that’s supposed to feel like.

Print

When you offer to share cover design with Calgary, and they take a few liberties! Apologies to our lovely Edmonton readers for our mistake. And rest assured it’s still full of Edmonton stories written but our hardworking team here! #yegpic.twitter.com/pXlRhiwZta

The Express d’Outremont is shutting down along with sister publication Express de Mont-Royal. They’re the second and third Montreal community newspapers to stop production this year, following Le Plateau in Plateau-Mont-Royal, which quietly stopped publishing this summer. Another paper, the Progrès Villeray, was reborn as “Quartier V”, but with no local news content. All of these papers were part of a network of newspapers in Montreal (including Métro) and Quebec City that Transcontinental sold this year. Of the 95 newspapers Transcontinental put up for sale last year, at least 10 have since shut down (three by Transcon, the other seven by new owners).

Hyperlocal Montreal news site Pamplemousse.ca, covering the Mercier, Plateau and Petite Patrie neighbourhoods, is back in business after a successful crowdfunding campaign brought the website back from the dead.

Québec solidaire isn’t getting much demand for journalists to follow its campaign bus, so it is opening up media accreditation to just about anyone who wants it. People covering the campaign would be given freedom to say what they want, but they would have to pay for the privilege to compensate the party for expenses related to their seat on the bus.

News about news

Two Reuters journalists imprisoned in Myanmar for supposedly breaking the country’s Official Secrets Act have been sentenced to seven years in prison. Governments around the world, including Canada, are calling for Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo to be released.

If the CRTC is trying to wean the broadcasting system off of free money, it hasn’t been showing it in the past couple of weeks as it has renewed mandatory distribution orders for most services that have that special status requiring all cable, satellite and IPTV subscribers to subscribe to those services.

Every service whose status was up for renewal on Aug. 31 was renewed, with three getting an increase in their per-subscriber fee and one getting a decrease. Overall, the total goes up by seven cents a month per subscriber.

A handful of young journalists have been spending a couple of weeks rehearsing for the launch of Montreal’s fourth English-language daily evening local newscast. On Labour Day, ready or not, it goes live.

CityNews Montreal is part of the second half of five local City stations that have decided to join Toronto in having local news at 6 and 11pm. Rogers has determined that these evening newscasts are worth investing in as part of meeting their new requirements for “locally reflective news” established by the CRTC as of last year.

To get an idea what we can expect from this newscast, I watched the existing ones in Edmonton and Winnipeg, and talked with Dave Budge, VP of news and information at Rogers, plus briefly with Melanie Porco, supervising producer in Montreal.